To celebrate the publication of the first section of my second novel, “Run Chicken Run,” at storySouth, here are some of the songs that inspired it: Link Wray’s “Vendetta,” “The Fuzz,” “Pancho Villa” and Link’s best vocal track, “Hidden Charms.” Like so many things in my creative life, Link provided the drive and soundtrack to this project, which is still ongoing. Now that there’s an excerpt published, though, I should probably get back to work on this novel; it can’t be the forever forthcoming novel forever. Endless thanks to editors Terry L. Kennedy and Drew Perry for taking a chance on it and for their careful reading and edits. Time for some fuzz:

In honor of an essay I wrote for The Normal School Issue 6 about my stoned youth and the stoner archetype in American pop culture, I present a choice clip from the classic stoner never-coming-of-age film The Stoned Age, from which I drew my essay’s title. You can find info on the magazine and essay here, and you can feather your hair and crack a warm can of The Beast to the above clip.